by Gil Hogg
“I don’t know, Jim. Explain it to me.”
I was still grovelling.
“You know, you dick-head. Our lives would have been endangered if we had left them.”
“That’s not interrogation.”
Blake stopped and faced me, his lips only a few inches away, pink, with shiny white teeth and a pleasant breath, bearing in mind what we’d done in the last twenty-four hours; a faint, distant humour at the corners of his mouth.
“If you want to make something of this take it to Vaughan yourself. Tell him. He can’t have thought anything of the report. He hasn’t even mentioned it to me himself. But if one officer says he has evidence of killing by a brother officer, Vaughan will have to listen to that. If you really want to shit on the Regiment and on me, do it, man!”
Our eyes were locked: Blake’s bright, challenging; mine quivering, blurred.
After a pause, Blake punched my shoulder playfully but hard. “You’re a good guy, Bob, a serious guy. Gail’s lucky to have you.”
We walked together without speaking. I thought Blake would go on killing with warrior lust, shoving aside the corpses, from major to colonel to brigadier to general, and on to honourable retirement. I was half a step behind in understanding, half soldier, half civilian, perhaps half man. I could be looking for a job at twenty-seven. Handy with mortars. Passable with a pistol. Leave out map-reading. A useful man in a chocolate factory. The Vietnamese woman in the hut had a face that was flattened with silent pain.
The darkening clouds squeezed down on the jungle. We ran the last few yards to our quarters, saturated.
Boyd was reclining naked on his bunk.
“There ought to be a law against bodies like yours,” Blake said.
The rain roared and cooled the air. We three were comfortable and intimate. We jawed idly. Blake seemed to have dismissed my remarks as trivia; we were still making eye contact, conversing on subjects a world away from the bloody crotch of the unjust war. We joked. We were buddies.
20
Weston looked tired. His hands shook slightly. Some of his papers were scattered on the floor of his office. The fan whirred monotonously and created waves of warm air. He was working on a small cleared space on the desk-top, wearing a pair of steel-rimmed glasses. He looked unsoldierly compared to his immaculate toy-soldier appearance when he was marching.
I stood in the doorway. Outside, the anti-room was crowded with soldiers. Clerks kept pushing past me, asking Weston questions. He was performing several tasks at once.
“Can I speak to you alone for a moment, Peter?”
Weston took no notice. He went on instructing a clerk. When the clerk went out I stepped in and closed the door.
“Couldn’t it wait till tomorrow, Bob?” Weston said tiredly. “I’ve got a lot on at the moment.”
“It’s about Trask.”
“Urrrrggh! History!”
“I want to see Vaughan and try to persuade him to drop the charge.”
Weston’s face tightened, the narrowing brown eyes searched the corners of the room for an answer. “Whaaat? You’ve got no chance! What’s got into you, man? You wouldn’t understand what it’s like having to work with Vaughan. He won’t hear you, Bob… he fucking doesn’t listen to me!”
“I need to try.”
“He won’t listen to me, Bob. I’ve had more weird problems with this guy than… ”
“I need your advice Peter, off the record.”
“Wait a minute. I’m not giving you any immunity! Nothing is off the record. I’m an adjutant, not a stress councillor.”
I hesitated, and then decided to go on. “There could be some truth in Trask’s allegations about the killings. I was there.”
Weston’s expression curdled sickeningly. “Could be? You were fucking there. Don’t grease me with could be. It’s true or false.”
“We’re all screwing up sending a man away for something he hasn’t done, to silence him.”
Weston removed his glasses. “I’m not going to ask if you were a witness to what happened on that patrol. I don’t want to hear about your involvement.”
“It would be in everybody’s interest, including the Regiment, if Vaughan investigated and sent the real culprit down on the assault charge, and then conducted an inquiry into Trask’s report.” I had finally reached the point where I should have been twenty-four hours ago.
Weston threw himself back in his chair and waved away a clerk who tried to enter. “This would involve Jim Blake. Probably the best officer in the unit, gazetted to take over D Company in a month, and probably the whole bloody Regiment in a year. Your friend.”
“I don’t want to hurt Jim, but… ”
“If anything bad happened on that patrol, killing villagers, Vaughan will be finished. What do you expect him to do but try to close the can of worms?”
“He’s found a lousy way.”
“Hell! It’s gone too far now,” Weston said, standing and placing a calming hand on my arm. “Why take this line, Bob? OK, so you don’t agree. You don’t like it. Trask’s your man. All that. But why stand out against the old man when he’s absolutely determined? You can’t achieve anything, and you won’t do yourself any good.”
“Let me see him.”
*
We found Vaughan striding restlessly around his empty desk. The room was large, quiet, shaded from outside by low trees. Vaughan bade us enter cordially, looking from one to the other, the movements of his head excessive because of the wall eye.
“Well, gentlemen?”
Weston said, “Mr McDade wanted to raise a matter in relation to Darrel Trask.” The downbeat tone of his voice and his immediate departure from the room suggested that the matter was unimportant.
Vaughan was coldly quiet for a moment, probably anticipating my concern. Then he smiled. “We’ve finished all that, Mr McDade. The man is scum. He’s got to take his punishment. We have to make an example of him.”
“I know the man’s completely innocent.”
“Don’t say another word, Lieutenant. What’s done is done.”
“Trask has raised a serious case of what amounts to a war crime, and you’re putting him away to shut him up.”
Vaughan coloured, stood up and raised his voice. “He has no credibility. He’s a louse. I’ve given him a light sentence. He could get five years in a state pen for what he did.”
“He didn’t do anything. The woman was lying because she wanted to get away with the entertainment group.”
Vaughan came close to me and squinted suspiciously. “Whose side are you on, Mr McDade?”
I could smell an old man’s caried breath.
“There’s other evidence of what happened on the patrol, and surely it warrants investigation.”
Vaughan was distracted and looked out through the shutters at the rubber tree outside, swaying in the wind.
“Other rats?” he mused. “It doesn’t make any difference at all, except to strengthen my resolve to put Trask somewhere where they’ll kick his head up his ass. Nobody else is going to come forward are they? Nobody else is low enough to rat on his unit.”
Vaughan turned round to look lopsidedly at me, braced, shoulders back, legs wide, arms hanging from his shoulders, loose-wristed.
“I think, sir… ”
“Enough, Lieutenant. Dismiss!” Vaughan said, resuming his seat.
I stood my ground.
“Dismiss, I said!”
There was a long silence. The sunlight through the trees outside dappled a square of floor, reflecting on patches of water that still lay on the tiles after the daily mopping.
“Mr McDade, I gave you an order, which you have ignored, and now I’m going to give you another. As Trask’s CO you will march him on parade at sixteen hundred hours and read the charges and punishment to the Regiment.”
I found my words undeniably there, like stones in a gear mechanism. “I can’t do that, sir.”
Vaughan’s lined face now had a bruised darkness a
bout it. His fingers hopped like small monkeys from article to article on the desk, touching each, placing them precisely and passing on, the notebook, pencil holder, calendar, paper weight. “One more opportunity for you, mister.”
“Don’t force me to be involved, sir.”
“You could be court martialled for this.”
I remained silent. Vaughan rose from his desk, came around to me, staring closely into my face, breathing heavily and twitching. Suddenly he raised a hand and pushed his fingers between the buttons on my shirt, crumpling the material and securing a fistful, which he twisted.
“You will, by God, you will!” he shouted.
I put my hand on Vaughan’s chest and pushed him away. Vaughan let go of me and teetered backwards, slipping on the damp tiles, twisting to try to save himself a heavy fall. His head struck the side of the desk with a crack and he flopped on the floor.
The door behind me opened. Weston was there with a clerk. They rushed forward and helped Vaughan to his feet. Vaughan was stunned, unable for a moment to stand unsupported.
I was numb with shock myself and I stood still.
“Take this officer into custody,” Vaughan muttered.
21
I was placed in a large vacant quarter by the parade ground. Weston was with the detail escorting me.
He was like a man in pain, eyes wide, lips drawn back. When the detail had been marched away leaving us alone, he said, “You’re not to attempt to leave here without my personal permission. Agreed?”
“Yes.”
“What the fuck have you done, Bob?”
“It was an accident. The old man grabbed my shirt and I pushed him off… ”
“Yeah, yeah, but seeing him in the first place. I tried to tell you!”
I brought the palms of my hands up hopelessly.
“Where’s this going to go? What’s a court going to lead to? Have you any idea?” Weston said in a thin, hysterical tone.
He would have to mastermind all the paper work and deal with a fractious commander.
I grimaced. “Do you think Vaughan might cool down?”
“No I don’t! Not the way it happened. Witnessed by me and the soldiers in the office. The story will spread. He can’t let you get away with it, Bob. You’re a complete jerk. You’ve started something now that we can’t stop. People are going to get chewed up. And we have a war to fight! Oh, shit!” Weston went out and slammed the door closed.
I sat down on a chair and lit a cigarette. I could see it vaguely, a momentum in events that was more than the contribution of all of them. I felt more distressed than humiliated or angry. I asked the Vietnamese servant who came in to dust the furniture to get me a cup of coffee. The drink seemed to require an inordinate amount of fussing from the servant when it came. When I gulped a mouthful I scalded my lips.
What had happened with Vaughan made me think that the life I had imagined with Gail after the war was now at a further remove. I don’t know why I should have connected the two but in my fears there was perhaps a buried connection. That future life had always been distant, the product of sleepless nights alone in my bunk. It was attractive, but always glossy and flat like a page in Vogue magazine. Marriage, children, a home; coming home at six in a business suit, or tweeds if I was teaching, mowing the lawn at weekends, taking Gail to a baseball game. A kind of unattainable domestic perfection.
I could look out across the parade ground towards the network of roads beyond. Convoys of vehicles were crawling across the barbed wire landscape. Bodies swayed in the back of trucks, squeezed together, helmets at angles, clutching their weapons. Trask kept bobbing to the surface of my thoughts like Mills’ corpse in the river. And the Vietnamese woman, the stretch marks of old pregnancies on her white belly.
I saw Weston walking towards the mess for the afternoon break, his normally upright head was down. I could see a change in him. He had lived with the model of the warrior for years and once aspired to be one. Now the Army was fast ceasing to lose its fascination. He had lost his stomach for war, the relentless pressure and the sheer disfunction of it. He wanted to be home with his family, preferably in a quiet administrative post at Fort Montgomery, because he still loved the Army in the abstract. He was yellowing at the edges like an old sheet of paper. He would make half-colonel and eventually a steady desk job but he was no longer a man with a future like Blake.
Officers were approaching the mess building from all directions, some walking, some being driven. Blake arrived ahead of Weston. The cook would have made a fresh batch of muffins or cookies. The smell of baking would be like the smell of 2nd Avenue, Saratoga Springs on Saturday morning. The officers would fetch their coffee or Coke or orange juice, and gather together as the word spread. An officer from 3 Comp was to be court martialled. What for? And who was it? McDade? No. Yes, it was McDade, a mild guy who was a big buddy of Jim Blake. The air of amiability which the comfort-eating of muffins and biscuits generated would be tinged with excitement about the news. Weston, always assumed by others to know everything, would probably resist the whispered questions. Amid the upsets of war, the court martial of a brother officer was yet another wacky event, and quite insufficient to inhibit the appetite. Four or five singed and broken biscuits in a constellation of crumbs would be all that was left as the officers put down their coffee cups, patted their bellies and made ready to return to their duties.
*
I watched the parade from my window. The Stars and Stripes, raised at reveille and lowered at retreat, hung from the flagpole in the still air like a dead bird. The parade ground and the roads and buildings beyond it seemed a long way away, and they quivered in the heat rising from the surface. The Regimental Sergeant Major, energetically stiff and shining, spaced five soldiers across the ground. The companies of the Regiment and the platoons within the companies were formed up on the road in a long column of threes, awaiting the order to march on. The men, standing easy, moved restively to make the best of their last freedom before remaining stone-still for half an hour.
An order, and the Regiment banged to attention. The column marched on to the ground led by Colonel Vaughan, swinging arms raised high, paddling through the air, each company peeling off on its marker. The solitary tapping of a drum gave precision to the left footfall of the marchers. When the whole Regiment had halted on the parade ground, the RSM’s shouts moved them into straighter rows; the scraping of boots on asphalt was like a roar whenever he moved a file of men a few inches to left or right. I could see Trask and his escort waiting on the road. A huge balloon of sullen grey cloud had drifted to dominate the scene. Now they were ready, the officers lined behind the Colonel, facing the Regiment. To one side, Trask and his escort, also facing the Regiment. Colonel Vaughan began to address the assembly, but at this distance I could only guess what he said.
22
“That’s the story,” I said.
Amherst wiped his palm over his skull and sipped the whiskey. “The essence of this is that the facts are trivial although the charge, striking a superior officer, is serious. Should never have been brought. Vaughan should be a better man manager than he is. In a theatre of war the court only wants to try grave cases.”
“So you can get me off?”
“Nothing guaranteed, but, yeah. I reckon you have a good chance to get away with maybe a reprimand at worst. We need the girl, James. Show she was mistaken, in a hurry to get away.”
“What makes you think she’ll admit a lie, call it a mistake?”
“Nothing. We’ll have to see. If she’s helpful we’ll use her.”
I didn’t voice my uneasiness about Ann James. It wasn’t specific; more a feeling of mistrust. “What about Trask’s report?”
Amherst flicked through my copy. “Crudely written, but graphic. It will probably lead to an official enquiry, but that’s another matter. This is what was animating you, and it explains Vaughan’s cover-up.” He took a deep pull on the whiskey, savoured it. “I think it’s crucial.”
“Am I likely to be asked about the allegations in the report?”
“Sure. You’re named.”
“But Jim Blake and Gail… ”
“The Court won’t want to hear too much. Another cartload of muck on a mud-spattered Army. You’ll be on oath. It happened.”
“I could say… I don’t really know what happened.”
“I don’t read lessons on morals, Bob, but my advice as your lawyer is to tell it how it was.”
I was momentarily ashamed of showing myself as a pliable would-be liar, and I returned to Ann James. “I’d sooner we did without her. She’s not reliable. She’s a whore. Her first loyalty is to herself.”
“And yours?” Amherst’s grey eyes were as opaque as stone.
“OK, ok, ok!” I said, grabbing the whiskey bottle and pouring a draft down my throat.
“I know what you mean about James,” Amherst spoke dismissively. “She’s hard, used to looking after herself. It doesn’t necessarily mean she won’t be of use to us.”
Amherst slid his papers into his briefcase. It was the first real tension between us. He said more softly, “I’ll see James if she’s in ‘Gon, and we’ll make a decision.”
23
I had placed two deck chairs with a striped Coca Cola sun shade stuck into the earth between them, on the small enclosed grass patch outside my quarters. A rubber mattress lay in the sun and near it a towel, sunglasses, a packet of Lucky Strike and a small gold lighter engraved with my initials, which Gail had given me.
I pulled off my shirt and lay in the sun for a time. The sky was a pallid blue with wisps of cloud. I tried to imagine that the sky was the cold sea of the US east coast, but at the same time I was conscious of moving inexorably towards… a kind of chaos. Yes, there would be military men moving around, talking, referring to pieces of paper, but behind this for me, bolts of emotion that would strike me and sear my flesh. I was sick with apprehension.
